Blood Lust

To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let's march, let's march!
Let an impure blood
Soak our fields!

(From The Marseillaise-
The War Song for the Army of the Rhine)

Two articles have appeared in The Atlantic analyzing Trump's speech in Warsaw, a speech the WSJ called  "a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition."

This is from one of them by Peter Beinart titled "The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump's Warsaw Speech,": "The most shocking sentence in Trump's speech — perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime — was his claim that 'The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.' ... Trump's sentence only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia." Beinart begins his piece saying: "In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to 'the West' and five times to 'our civilization.' His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It's important that other Americans do, too."

The other article, written by James Fallow, says this:  "...what he called 'civilization' ... boils down to ties of ethnicity and blood."

Is there one liberal or conservative American who thinks that the words "the West" and "Western civilization" mean a celebration of white-blood purity?

Apparently the West has become a solitary, hostile, and genetically unified entity entrenched and on guard, with nothing to offer but historical bloodlines that are seeking to oppose, and drain if necessary, "an impure blood." 
Apparently the Common Market has finally done what Napoleon and Hitler could not.

A Case of Medical Fraud

This apparently was filled as part of a "whistle-blower" suit:"

Orthopedic surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital repeatedly kept patients waiting under anesthesia longer — sometimes more than an hour longer — than was medically necessary or safe, as they juggled two or even three simultaneous operations, according to a federal lawsuit that alleges frequent billing fraud at the prestigious hospital.

Dr. Lisa Wollman, a former anesthesiologist at Mass. General, alleges in the lawsuit that at least five surgeons endangered patients by regularly performing simultaneous surgeries. Wollman charges that the doctors also defrauded the government by submitting bills for surgeries in which they were not in the operating room for critical portions of procedures, leaving the work to unsupervised trainees.

Wollman’s attorney said it was premature to talk about the damages if Mass. General is found to have improperly billed Medicaid and Medicare, but the costs could be considerable. The law calls for treble damages and Mass. General could face an additional penalty of at least $5,000 for each instance of improper billing. If Wollman prevails, she could potentially receive 25 percent to 30 percent of any money recovered under the False Claims Act. (from the Boston Globe)

This could be very interesting. Simultaneous procedures are common in surgery as various parts of a surgery are often done by specific individuals who move from case to case. And the whistle-blower as a "former" employee only makes it more provocative.

Sunday/Degree

The nearest Shakespeare comes to a lecture on politics is Ulysses’ speech in Troilus and Cressida to the Greek council of war, which is debating how to stop Achilles’ sulking. Ulysses’ theme is that “degree”—authority and hierarchy—is essential for society.

O when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogeniture and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?

So the social contract and its legal authority are both dependent upon the infrastructure of "degree," sequential power through authority and hierarchy. Every once in a while Shakespeare sounds Catholic.

World Ice Theory

When you start with these theories, you seem to be inclined to create "Grand Unifying Theories," one ring to rule them all. Lysenkos are everywhere when crackpots gather.

Without understanding the relationship between Nazism and the supernatural, one cannot fully understand the history of the Third Reich, or so says Eric Kurlander in  Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. It has that effort to give science "soul," but also is reminiscent of current efforts to regionalize--or give an ethnicity to--science.

Hitler and Himmler sponsored a fanciful doctrine known as “World Ice Theory,” which posited that history, science, and religion could be explained by moons of ice hitting the earth in prehistoric times. Even in 1945, as the Third Reich was collapsing, the Nazis cobbled together a guerrilla band of Nazi “Werewolves” to combat Communist partisans, who were in turn accused of vampirism by ethnic Germans fleeing the Russians.

Invented by the Austrian scientist and philosopher Hanns Hörbiger, World Ice Theory (Welteislehre or WEL) was inspired by a dream in which Hörbiger found himself floating in space, observing a giant pendulum swinging back and forth, growing ever longer and eventually breaking. When he woke Hörbiger claimed to know intuitively that the sun’s gravitational pull ceased to exert any force at three times the distance of Neptune and that most of the physical universe could be explained through the interplay of the “antagonistic Ur-substances of ice and fire.” 

Lacking even a rudimentary scientific background, Hörbiger enlisted the amateur astronomer Philip Fauth, with whom he collaborated in publishing their “findings,” Glacial Cosmogony, in 1912. Their work posited that much of the known universe was created when a small, water-filled star collided with a much larger star, causing an explosion, the frozen fragments of which created multiple solar systems, including our own. All of natural phenomena became subject to these missiles of ice, even human life.

Absurd and totalizing as it was, Hörbiger’s “all-encompassing theory of heaven and earth” promised to solve “the cosmic riddle between original creation and world collapse.” It explained everything from “the origins of the sun and species” to “the earthquake of Messina,” Inca religion, and Nordic mythology.

In the 1920s a number of amateur scientists and bourgeois intellectuals joined together to form the Cosmotechnical Society (Kosmotechnische Gesellschaft) and Hörbiger Institute, creating a virtual cult around Hörbiger and his teachings. His theories also appealed to ariosophists (believers in an esoteric doctrine that prophesied the resurgence of a lost Aryan civilization peopled by Nordic “God Men”) and Germanic paganists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Guido von List, and Lanz von Liebenfels, who saw in Welteislehre “scientific” proof of their views. In this Ur-Germanic alternative to “Jewish” physics and “soulless” natural science, the cataclysmic floods, apocalyptic battles, and heroic Aryan civilization of the Old Norse Edda appeared to be confirmed.

World Ice Theory, according to the Nazi intellectual Edgar Dacqué, represented a “racial spirit of the times and science” rolled into one. It was an “aggressive response and revolutionary departure from the system of foreign scientific powers,” including the “self-satisfied bourgeois” astronomy and physics of the West. Both Nordic mythology and völkisch-esoteric doctrines such as ariosophy had posited a series of Ur-cataclysms and ice ages, which caused biological mutations in Earth’s inhabitants, producing Atlantean supermen and monstrous humanoids. Weaned on Wagner, Chamberlain, and Lanz von Liebenfels, many völkisch thinkers consequently recognized in World Ice Theory the ancient Aryans (Atlanteans) whose civilization had been destroyed by their former Tschandal (subhuman) slaves. Supporters of World Ice Theory were likewise keen to point out parallels between the Austrians Hörbiger and Hitler, including their mutual success, as so-called amateurs, in conquering the fields of science and politics respectively. 

World Ice Theory was the only border science that Hitler embraced wholly and with conviction.

(Adapted from Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich by Eric Kurlander.)

So World Ice Theory came within an invasion of Russia from being settled science.

Sinterklaas

Sinterklaas 

Amsterdam hosts the largest Saint Nicholas parade in the world. The white-bearded legend traditionally makes his spectacular entrance into the city by sailing down the Amstel River then trades his boat for his white horse Amerigo, and the parade continues through the streets. Although the feast of Saint Nicolas falls on 6 December, the evening of 5 December is the main gift-giving occasion during the holiday season in the Netherlands. Called 'sinterklaasavond' (Sinterklaas evening) or'pakjesavond' (presents evening), Sint drops off a sack full of gifts on the doorstep before heading back to Spain. Following his late-night visit, much like at Christmas, everyone unwraps their presents from Sinterklaas and reads aloud the poems that have been written especially for each recipient. The author of these light-hearted poems remains anonymous.

Saint Nicholas has had close ties with Amsterdam since 343 AD. Legend has it that Sinterklaas originally came from Turkey to Amsterdam as St. Nicolaus, the Bishop of Mira. He is specifically described as a benefactor of young women. No one really knows why he then chose to live in Spain but historians point to the Spanish domination over the Netherlands in the past. His name appears on the oldest Greek list and on five other lists of participants in the Council of Nicaea and he is said to have physically attacked and beaten the major Arian bishop over the nature of the Trinity--and is often pictured as having a broken nose as a result.

The Christmas-like celebration on Dec. 5 has in recent years become part of the polarized discourse about race in The Netherlands. At the heart of the discussion is "Black Pete," Sinterklaas' helper--often the Saint's "enforcer" who punishes naughty children--who is often played by white people in blackface makeup and Afro wigs. Opponents see him as an outdated and offensive caricature that harks back to slavery, while the majority of Dutch people see Pete as a harmless children's character who has come to symbolize what they see as attacks on Dutch culture and traditions. Even the sacred United Nations has weighed in, with its Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year urging the Netherlands to "actively promote the elimination of those features of the character of Black Pete which reflect negative stereotypes and are experienced by many people of African descent as a vestige of slavery."

This has persisted in the country's public debate with the Black minority increasingly annoyed and the traditional Dutch surprisingly resistant to change. Some additions have been made with Zwarte Pieten evolving into a sort of sooty chimney-sweep.

Dutch Stamps:
  

The Cons of Spontaneous Order

 One of the elements of Libertarian thinking veers close to Naturalistic Fallacy.

Here is an excerpt of a  letter to Bordeaux from Caplan. Bordeaux had written earlier that the Left did not understand the notion of "spontaneous order;" Caplan disagrees:

"I don’t think it’s correct to argue that leftists do not “grasp the reality of spontaneous order.” It is precisely that spontaneous order and the freedom that yields it (sic) that the left hates, because it is the opposite of the centralized control that is the reason d’etre of the left. Here is a simple conceptual experiment: Suppose that the left did understand spontaneous order and its implications. Can anyone believe that they would applaud it? Of course not, because it is a specific set of evolving allocational outcomes that they demand, along with the coercion needed to effect them. That is why the left is fundamentally anti-human."

Are there examples of spontaneous order that Caplan would try to rise above?

Migration in Europe

Some recently published numbers on immigration:

Sweden, a self-described “humanitarian superpower,” accepted 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015. A year later, only 500 of these migrants had found work, the Local reports.

The cost of accepting and taking care of these migrants was billions of dollars, according to the Financial Times.

In the Netherlands, 90 percent of Syrian and Eritrean asylum seekers, the largest groups of migrants, remain dependent on social benefits.

Almost none was employed after 18 months in the country, reports Wakker Nederland, a Dutch public broadcaster.

In Germany, all non-Germans make up about 10 percent of the overall population of the country. And yet, they accounted for 30.5 percent of all crime suspects in 2016.

Refugees officially only make up 2 percent of the German population, but accounted for 8.6 percent of all crime suspects.

According to statistics compiled by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the number of migrant crime suspects in 2016 increased by an alarming 52.7 percent. The number of migrants living in Germany only increased by 11 percent in the same time period.

Aydan Özoğuz, the German commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a 25 percent of migrants in Germany would find employment in the next five years.

“Many of the first Syrian refugees to arrive in Germany were doctors and engineers, but they were succeeded by many, many more who lacked skills,” Özoğuz said.